Faithful Readers: The serial management apologizes for last week’s posting hiatus, which was due to the world briefly becoming too much for the writing staff. We return now to our weekly schedule, in time to celebrate Post 25, our silver anniversary!

Simmering in Place

On the fifth floor, in apartment 502, Kay blew a series of excercises on her clarinet—scales, arpeggios, long tones, triplets. The notes climbed up and down, in … Read more

Public Records II

The shock of Phyllis’s lips in the velvety darkness of the records room muffled the practical problems Laura knew she should point out. It wasn’t only the physical fact of Phyllis’s lips on hers but the astounding fact that Phyllis, careful, protocol-conscious Phyllis, had thrown caution to the winds!

Laura found it at once disturbing reckless—and deeply romantic. The contradictory reactions seemed … Read more

Missed the earlier episodes? You can find them all here. Or start from the beginning with Episode I and use the “next” button at the top the screen to move between episodes.

The Magdalena Arms Rallies ‘Round

“Lon! Angelo! What were you thinking?” Dolly scolded. She had to force herself to assume a severity she didn’t feel; she envied Lon their … Read more

Entering the basement kitchen in search of her missing mask, Dolly surprised Laura and Phyllis, seated at opposite ends of the long table where Dolly had once kneaded dough for her sticky buns, mixed up waffle batter, or chopped green peppers and ham for omelets, making the hearty breakfasts the Magdalena Arms was famous for.

The communal breakfasts were now a distant memory. And a good thing, too, Dolly reminded herself. It certainly would have been awkward, feeding her boarders buffet style, given the new health requirements!

The two Bay City civil servants started guiltily at Dolly’s entrance, as if their landlady had interrupted them in … Read more

Love in a Time of Pandemic

As Phyllis stepped onto the third floor landing, she automatically glanced down the hallway and the three shut doors that lined it.

As if on cue, the door to Apartment 401 swung open and Laura stepped out.

Phyllis caught her breath at the sight of her downstairs neighbor. Had there ever been a more attractive Assistant to the Head of Public Housing?

Like Phyllis, Laura followed a regular routine, dressing each morning with her usual care, eating at her regular times, and had confided to Phyllis that it was her strict rule not … Read more

In Apartment 501, Phyllis was hunched over her laptop, studying a graph as intricate as a spiderweb, tiny intersecting lines representing death rates and confirmed cases from around the world. “There’s hopeful news from Estonia,” reported the steadfast statistician, ever-eager to find a bright spot in the gray clouds of the pandemic.

“That’s nice,” said Maxie, who was visiting from downstairs. She sat the required six feet away on Phyllis’s bed, her second cup of coffee on the bedside table, her nimble thumbs flying busily as she texted her friend Stella. “But what’s the news closer to home?”

Down the hall in apartment 502, Kay… Read more

Caspary wrote Laura in 1942, and the eponymous heroine is a curtain opener for the career girls who would later flood the fiction market. In 1943 the New York Times called this story of an advertising executive who is presumed murdered and then turns up alive and becomes a … Read more